What is it with Hollywood and dark stories? So I’ll add Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to my list. That list is highly acclaimed movies that are gratuitously dark. On the list are Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, and even though it isn’t highly acclaimed, Avengers: Infinity War. What I found so uninteresting about Three Billboards is that it is a study of hate and revenge. The movie showed us different ways and reasons and expressions of hate and different ways to take revenge. For two hours. Then, in the concluding 15 minutes, there was forgiveness and humanity as Mildred and Jason decide not to murder a rapist. While I was watching, I asked myself, “Do I want to watch two hours of hate and revenge? To what purpose?” No. I don’t. I’m beginning to think I’ll have to take a vacation from Hollywood, as I did with pop music during the disco period.

Do we like to watch human darkness? Do we want to pay money to watch hate and revenge? For two hours? Is life dark in its essence? My life isn’t. And the life of my friends isn’t. And neither I nor my friends are living in existential bad faith. We’re just living our lives. Authentically. There may be some philosophical currents that claim life is dark. The Borg in Star Trek were created because viewers wanted a darker story. Why? What’s so great about darkness? I think that people who crave dark stories are living in bad faith because I’m guessing that their lives aren’t all that dark, either.

Then I thought about really great art. Many of Shakespeare’s plays are tragic. They dramatize the lust for power, prejudice, the lust for revenge, hatred, anger, death, and other themes that are hard to watch. And Sophocles not only wrote about murder, he wrote about incest.

Yet I enjoy Shakespeare. And the darkness in it doesn’t put me off. I think that the difference with Shakespeare is that there is nobility in it, too. Of course I need not even mention the beauty of the language–the perfect marriage of sound and sense. Shakespeare tears one’s heart open. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri just bored me with the incessant rage and petty revenge. It wasn’t even all that true to life, as people, generally, don’t burn down police stations.

Plato had a real problem with well-done evil. The Greek word kala means good and beautiful. So it was a real question how you could have a beautiful ugliness. Shakespeare isn’t wholly ugly in its beauty, with the noble impulses motivating his characters. There is no nobility in Three Billboards, Manchester by the Sea, or Moonlight. There is only base and unlovely humanity.

The Bee Gees are considered a great band by some. And Boogie-oogie-oogie, the disco song, won a Grammy. But when I had to live through the disco period, I turned exclusively to Classical Music until better pop music came back. Looks like I’m going to have to do that with Hollywood, now. Hope it won’t take too long.